Now Available: Rabun County, Georgia, Newspapers, 1894 – 1899

I’m very pleased to announce that my first full-length publication, Rabun County, Georgia, Newspapers, 1894 – 1899, will be ready for purchase and delivery early next week.

I’m so excited about this publication. Newspapers are an underutilized source of historical and genealogical information, primarily because they’re unindexed and sometimes difficult to locate. There are three newspapers covered by this compilation: The Clayton Argus (1894), The Tallulah Falls Spray (1897 – 1898), and The Clayton Tribune (1899).1 Of the extant issues, only a handful have been microfilmed. The remainder are only available as original issues or as photocopies of news items clipped from the originals, and all of those are held by the Rabun County Historical Society, which is open a limited number of hours each week.

In anticipation of this volume’s release, I’ve placed excerpts and portions of the index online.

I made the index as thorough as I could, including subjects, place names, and people. There are two indexes available online. The first was taken from the book’s index, and the second is an index I created while transcribing:

Localities mentioned include a number of places in the United States and around the world, although the focus was on the regions of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, adjacent to Rabun County, including:

This volume is hardbound, 8 1/2 x 11″ with 292 + viii pages. The price is $30 plus $5 shipping and handling. For those who are interested in purchasing a copy, order before May 15 to receive $5 off. To order, e-mail me or write to Dawn Watson, PO Box 292, Rabun Gap, GA 30568.

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1. The dates inside parentheses are the years for which there are known extant issues. The vast majority of extant issues are from the latter two papers, as there are only two extant issues for The Clayton Argus. The Tallulah Falls Spray was first published in 1896 and seems to have discontinued in 1898 at some point after The Clayton Tribune began publication in that same year. There are no extant issues for The Tribune from its first year. Other newspapers were known to have been published in Rabun County during this time period; however, no issues from these papers have survived to the present day. For more information, see the preface and introductory remarks about each newspaper in Rabun County, Georgia, Newspapers, 1894 – 1899.

One item I should have mentioned is that the R. J. Taylor Jr. Foundation (http://www.taylorfoundation.org/) in Atlanta, GA, provided the vast majority of the funding to have this book printed. The Taylor Foundation is also providing funds to have copies placed in large libraries, archives, and societies around the US.